Tag Archives: shelling

I’ve been waiting for months for the final report from Sri Lanka’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (often referred to as the “LLRC”). The commission had been appointed by President Rajapaksa in May 2010 to examine events during the last seven years of the war between the government and the Tamil Tigers (the war ended in May 2009 with the government’s victory over the Tigers).

The Sri Lankan government has used the existence of the commission to say that an international investigation into war crimes and other human rights abuses committed by both sides during the war in Sri Lanka wasn’t needed. On Dec. 16, the Sri Lankan government released the LLRC’s final report. I have to say that I’m disappointed with the report.

As the deadly violence continues to escalate in Sri Lanka I am distraught by the lack of attention it’s receiving. Just last week a hospital in northern Sri Lanka, where more than 800 people were sheltering, was shelled four times. At least 9 were killed and 20 injured by the attack. It’s not clear who did the shelling; both the Sri Lankan government and the opposition Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been blamed.

A Sri Lankan Tamil civillian girl wounded in shelling. (c) AFP/Getty

The hospital is located in the war zone in northern Sri Lanka, where government forces have succeeded in pushing the LTTE into a small area of land. Trapped with the Tigers are over 250,000 civilians who are not allowed by the LTTE to leave. The Sri Lankan government, as part of its offensive, has been carrying out aerial and artillery attacks in the area with the result that hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured. The government has declared “safe zones” for civilians to seek shelter, but several civilians in “safe zone” have killed or injured due to shelling.

Last week, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reported that hundreds of civilians had been killed or injured due to the intensified fighting between the two sides. Shortly thereafter, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued statements calling on both sides to protect civilians. Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, also voiced his concern. The Sri Lankan government subsequently announced that the Tigers had 48 hours to let civilians leave the war zone; this appeared to be an unofficial truce. It expired on Saturday night. The fighting, and thus the shelling and the civilian deaths, resumed on Sunday.

I can’t help noticing a contrast with Gaza. Gaza seems to get lots of press attention, while Sri Lanka doesn’t appear to get as much. Both involve indiscriminate attacks against civilians, in war zones that the media is denied access to. Yet it seems that the suffering in Gaza deserves more attention than the deaths and injuries in Sri Lanka. Why is that? Can’t the world take on another crisis? If we don’t, we may be reading soon about, not hundreds, but thousands of civilians being killed. That might be worth thinking about.